


mad machine

by KelpietheThundergod



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anxiety, Broken Heart, Dean's Michael-trauma, Dean-Centric, Dissociation, Grief, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e03 The Rupture, Post-Possession Trauma, Psychological Horror, Self-Harm, Shattered Sense Of Self, episode coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 13:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21300128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KelpietheThundergod/pseuds/KelpietheThundergod
Summary: Dean makes bacon. Dean almost burns the bacon. Sam’s voice snaps him back into the present, into focus, sharp and clear and horrible, for just long enough that he turns the stove off.
Relationships: background Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 19
Kudos: 127





	mad machine

_you are like wounded beasts _

When he stumbles in at a little past 9 in the morning—way late for Sammy standards—Sam doesn’t even say anything about how Dean’s usual five fingers of the good stuff is more like double the amount of the _ very _ good stuff. Or about how he’s wearing yesterday’s clothes and obviously never went to bed last night. He just heads straight for the coffee maker, gigantic feet padding over the cold kitchen tiles.

Dean never walks anywhere in here without boots on or slippers or, at the very least, socks. But Sam doesn’t seem to feel the cold. He may be huge, but Dean’s definitely more softly cushioned than him with layers of fat here and there. Back when Sam outgrew him and got all smug about it, Dean told himself that at least that meant he did an okay job feeding him. That, somehow, all that cheap tuna and cheaper milk had been enough to make Sammy big and strong, able to protect himself.

Didn’t mean there wasn’t a cold clench in his chest when Dad eyed the way his leather jacket hung so poorly on Dean’s frame, or that Dean didn’t lock himself in the bathroom to clip his eyelashes short with shaking fingers, glaring at his reflection.

Now, Dean eyes Sammy’s bruised eyes and pale skin. He has no idea if he sounds normal when he asks, “You want some bacon?”

Sam makes a noncommittal noise. He pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut, and then yawns, all wide open mouth. He rubs at his face, and picks up a mug. The coffee maker stutters, splutters, hums.

Dean sets his tumbler down, heaves himself to his feet. His stomach gurgles.

“Imma make some bacon.”

Dean makes bacon. Dean almost burns the bacon. Sam’s voice snaps him back into the present, into _ focus_, sharp and clear and horrible, for just long enough that he turns the stove off and moves the bacon to a plate.

Sam makes a face and refuses, shoves the plate at Dean. So Dean eats.

There’s always a faint buzzing in the kitchen, from the overhead lights. It’s been in Dean’s ears for hours. Now that Sam’s quiet again it’s back, and while it’s annoying, silence would be worse.

He doesn’t bother licking the grease off his fingers, just goes to wash his hands at the sink. The gurgles in his belly are worse than before. Sam doesn’t seem to hear them, even when Dean sits back down. He doesn’t comment on the lights being louder than usual either.

Sam goes to fill his mug up again.

“You want one?”

Dean does.

He makes fun of Sam’s bird-nest hair. When Sam shoots him his patent annoyed look, Dean smirks. The coffee is aggravating whatever pain is in his stomach. Dean brings the mug to his mouth. A zip of pain through his guts heralds another brief moment of clarity. Of almost _ panic_, because what has he _ done _? What is _ happening _ to him?

Sam, more awake, is looking around, frowning. “Hey, where—”

Overhead, the lights buzz. The clarity fades and makes way for thick, protective walls.

>

On the way to the case Dean found for them, he stops at the first gas station he sees and buys twenty bucks worth of road food.

“Dude,” Sam says, when Dean drops the plastic bag between them on the bench, “you’re gonna puke.”

Sam looks a little better, but he's more quiet than usual and his eyes are doing that far away thing that means he's still hung up on stuff. Dean digs through the bag one-handedly—_"Dammit, _Dean, watch the _road_!"—and shoves a water bottle and an apple at Sam.

Like a petulant toddler, Sam gripes that he told Dean he's not hungry. Twenty minutes later, he starts munching on the apple, and scowls at Dean's grin that's smug and obnoxious and hurts the corners of his mouth.

Through bites, Sam says, "You know, I still don't get it."

Dean exaggerates a sigh. "You're a big boy, you know how shared custody works."

They're driving past fields. It's mostly just them on the road, like Dean prefers it. He hates driving on busy highways and in big cities because people always crowd too close to Baby, trampling all over her boundaries.

"'_Shared custo_—'" Sam makes a disbelieving, disgusted noise. "Why do you have to be so gross about this?"

Dean could have sworn they'd been listening to music, but now he realizes what he's hearing is just the sound of Baby's engine and her tires and the wind. Reaching over, he turns on the radio.

Sam, knowing what that means, shakes his head at Dean and then settles in for a nap.

The radio is blaring _ Ballad Of A Truck Driver's Wife_. Dean wants to turn it up and drown himself out because, bitterly, he thinks he knows exactly how she feels.

Sam shifts in his seat and Dean turns the volume further down instead, until it's quiet enough that the music becomes white noise to his ears and melts into the sounds of the car and the asphalt it's eating, an incomprehensible roar.

>

Dean doesn't like the motel room Sam picks.

"You know, I coulda just kept driving." He sits on the edge of the bed closest to the door, gingerly, looking around in distrust and with a frown. The A/C is too loud, the faucet is dripping. The pattern on the comforter makes him nervous. Also his head hurts and his eyes itch—allergies, probably the carpet.

Sam, who's unpacking his bag, laughs a little. "Dean, the carpet isn't doing this to you. You're _ tired_. And you could _ not _ have kept driving, because you were hallucinating sheep on the road." Fishing his conditioner or whatever out of his bag, Sam points it at Dean in self-righteous triumph. "_Again_."

Dean rolls his eyes and flaps one hand like a mouth. Sam, his only audience, doesn't even see it, has already locked himself in the bath.

Glaring at nothing in particular, Dean kicks off his boots. He'd keep them on to avoid the evil carpet but his feet have been screaming at him for a while now. Hesitantly, he sets them down on the polyester covered floor, and his stomach twists. 

With a grimace, he lifts them off the carpet and shimmies further up the bed. Rubs at his feet through his socks. He wants a hot shower and a beer.

A stab of pain goes through his head and he leaves his feet alone to rub at his temples instead. With the pain comes clarity, comes fear. He rubs harder, eyes squeezed shut.

"It's just you. It's_ just—_you."

The A/C rattles. With the door closed, Dean can't hear the faucet drip but he can hear the rush of water in the shower, the way it hits the tiles and the curtain and the floor, on and on. It seems strange that Sam just started the shower, that there was a time when that noise wasn't there.

There used to be other noises—the TV blaring, arguments about the program. Dean's phone vibrating with text messages that now won't be send to him anymore. Then there were the bad noises—the endless pounding against a door that didn't even exist. The way his own voice sounded with his airways filled with water.

When Dean opens them again, his eyes draw moisture. He blinks black spots from his vision and glares at the carpet, tears running down his cheeks. Maybe he's just dehydrated. Maybe he needs sleep.

After digging a water bottle out of his bag, Dean struggles out of his pants and flannel. They get kicked to the foot of his bed together with the nauseating comforter.

When he turns it on, the TV is all static. He could probably fix it, but that'd mean getting up close and personal with the carpet again.

Dean hits the off button, chucks the remote to the side. It slides off the bed, hits the floor, and the back panel comes loose and spits out the batteries.

The wave of irrational anger that follows constricts Dean's chest like a vice. He has to curl his hands into fists, nails biting into his palms hard enough to draw blood. When he gets himself together enough to pick up the mess, his fingers brush the carpet. Nausea tries to climb up his throat and he has to rub his hands on the bedspread until they feel normal again.

When he drops the parts of the remote on his nightstand, his phone screen that was dark like a minute ago is flashing a low battery warning at him. Struggling to stay calm, his vision swimming, he manages to find his charger and plug it in.

With a tissue, Dean scrubs the fresh tear tracks off his cheeks, and then lies down on his back so he can breathe better. He spreads out on the bed, tries to fill up all the room. He falls asleep to the water still running, an arm thrown over his eyes.

>

The room is quiet. Dean sits up in bed. There’s no one next to him; the left side of the bed is vast and cold. There’s Sam in the other bed, but the shape of his body in the dark is no more than a smudge, an idea of a person.

A sensation is rising up in Dean's chest, familiar and terrifying—he can’t breathe.

His body doesn’t seem to care. It calmly shoves the covers aside, sets his feet down on the carpet. It stands. It walks over to the bathroom on bare feet. The need to breathe is turning into pain. Dean—his body—flips on the lights. He—it—they—walk up to the mirror, lock eyes with the reflection there.

“It’s just you,” his voice says.

>

Dean jolts awake to a dark room. Panting, panicking, he sits up, throws the covers away from himself. Wildly, he looks around. Strains his ears. Sam is still asleep. The A/C is still rattling.

On unsteady feet, Dean hurries to the bathroom. The carpet under his feet feels like what nails on chalkboard sound like. He hangs his head over the toilet, but can’t spit anything out except for bitter saliva.

He stays on his knees for a while. The bathroom floor is all blank tiles, but tears prick at his eyes anyway. The pain from earlier has wandered up from his stomach into his ribcage, to spread and settle there like heartburn.

>

“Something wrong with her?”

Dean has engine grease smudged up to his elbows. Sam has gotten up with the sun and found Dean outside, bend over Baby’s open hood.

“Heard a weird noise yesterday.”

Sam says he didn’t hear anything at all.

He hands Dean one of the mugs he’s holding, and Dean guzzles half of its contents at once, black and scalding hot. It burns, it sends his heart skipping.

“Gonna need to stop for gas.”

It _ hurts_, but the sudden sharpness and the fear don’t come. Dean breathes. He sips the rest more slowly, angling his hands just so to hide the bloody half-moons in his palms, the skin rubbed raw from carpet burn. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> not super happy with this one and i almost didn't post it at all even though i've been working on it for days, so it'd make me extra happy if you [reblogged it on tumblr](https://cuddlemonsterdean.tumblr.com/post/188796274341/mad-machine-dean-centric-post-15x03-coda-fic) and/or left me a comment if you liked it :)


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